Chart-topping nuns release third compilation of chants

Tuesday

Feb 18, 2014 at 12:01 AMFeb 18, 2014 at 11:11 AM

GOWER, Mo. - Eight times a day, a group of nuns files into a chapel in their rural Missouri monastery to chant and worship. Quite unexpectedly, the private, prayerful pursuit has made the Benedictines of Mary a chart-topping curiosity in the recording industry.

GOWER, Mo. — Eight times a day, a group of nuns files into a chapel in their rural Missouri monastery to chant and worship.

Quite unexpectedly, the private, prayerful pursuit has made the Benedictines of Mary a chart-topping curiosity in the recording industry.

After being named Billboard’s No. 1 classical traditional artist of 2012 and 2013, the nuns this month released their third album, Lent at Ephesus, on the De Montfort Music/Decca/Universal Classics label.

Matt Abramovitz, program director for New York classical radio station WQXR, which has featured the new album, said the station didn’t know what to make of it when the nuns’ first record arrived.

“They’re not professional singers,” he said. “They aren’t singing traditional classical repertoire, which is what we normally play. But we gave it a listen, and we were stunned by the quality of the performance and the sincerity. And they really were a hit with our audience.”

The latest album includes a capella chants, intricate harmonies and hymns of glory and redemption — all designed to capture the Christian season of preparation before Easter.

How this album and the nuns’ earlier releases — Advent at Ephesus and Angels and Saints at Ephesus — came to develop a following among classical and religious music lovers is something the monastery’s prioress can explain only in religious terms.

“With God,” said Mother Cecilia Snell, “all things are possible.”

The 22 nuns, with an average age of 29, live modestly at the monastery surrounded by about 280 acres of farmland. They model their existence after life in the early monasteries and wear the traditional habits that were largely abandoned 50 years ago.

Few get a glimpse into the nuns’ daily life, with the exception of visiting priests who come to the area to recharge. Unlike many U.S. nuns who devote themselves to public pursuits such as teaching or nursing, the nuns’ main focus is chanting each of the 150 poetic works found in the book of Psalms at least once each week in Latin, a language Snell describes as “mystical.”

When they aren’t chanting — the task consumes about four hours daily — they speak little so they can better focus on communing with God. The sisters don’t use the Internet, and Snell does so only in a limited way.

Someone who had heard their chanting suggested they make a CD as a thank-you to benefactors. Snell, a former French horn player in the Columbus Symphony, acted as the producer.

The pathway to a broader audience began when one of their recordings was given to Monica Fitzgibbons, general manager of De Montfort Music, based in Chicago, and tossed in a pile with other CDs. It might still be there if Fitzgibbons’ young son hadn’t asked to listen to it. Fitzgibbons, a former DreamWorks executive, and her husband, Kevin, a former Sony executive, were hooked.

“We know how to hear things in their raw state, and we found it beautiful,” Monica Fitzgibbons said.

So the couple arranged to record the nuns at their monastery.

The nuns receive prayer requests and notes of thanks from listeners. One recent letter came from a woman who described playing the nuns’ music as her husband was dying and talked about the comfort it brought.

The nuns use the profit they make from the recordings to help pay off the monastery they moved into in 2010 outside Gower, a town of about 1,500 located about 35 miles north of Kansas City.